


The Good Wards

by Anonymous



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:52:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fanfic submitted to anti-stand-with-ward on tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Wards

“Tommy, admit it, we’re absolutely lost.” Rose said, turning her head from the dark view out of the car window to glare at her brother.

“We’re not….” Thomas Ward shook his head. “Doctor Gardner gave me the directions for getting to the conference. I swear I followed them exactly! We can’t be lost!”

“Well, I don’t know about the directions Doctor Gardner gave you, but I swear I just saw Evangeline Lilly, and she didn’t look like an elf, so I’m really, really sure that we’re totally lost.” Rose looked out the window again and frowned. “Tommy, did Doctor Gardner say anything in those directions about going off the road, because I’m not seeing pavement, gravel or anything out there anymore.”

“What?” Tommy slammed on the brakes. “I must have missed a turn somewhere!” Or maybe he had taken a turn he shouldn’t have? Or…. He moaned and debated beating his head against the steering wheel. They were definitely lost, and he didn’t have a clue how it might have happened, much less how to get them back on their way to the conference he was supposed to be attending, with his baby sister tagging along.

“Tell me you remembered to make sure the GPS is powered up.” Rose told her brother.

Power up the GPS. Another thing he had forgotten to do, along with replacing the cable that would let him charge the GPS off the car’s cigarette lighter. “Rose, does your phone have a signal?” He asked his sister as he turned and dug for the bag containing his laptop and various electronics, piled into the seat behind them. Surely one of the assorted cables in that would let him power up the GPS at least temporarily.

Rose flipped her phone off of Castleville, the game she had been playing right before she figured out something was seriously wrong with the way they were going and checked for bars. Nothing. “Sorry. What about just turning around?”

“We could, but I’m not sure how we ended up wherever we are in the first place, so we might end up even more lost. I’m sorry, Rose. I’m sure this wasn’t how you wanted to spend your spring break.”

“Hey, I’m the girl who jumped at the chance to come to a psychology conference so I could hear someone talk about psychiatric patients and emergency medicine for two hours in the hope that I could get a little new info for a term paper I’ve already rewritten three times since it was assigned instead of heading to Florida with my friends. This will work out. We’re just a little turned around is all.” Rose looked out the window and then opened the door and climbed out of the car.

“Where are you going? It’s freezing out there!” Thomas demanded.

“There’s a hill, right up the whatever you thought was a road.” Rose said. “Keep looking for a cable that might work. I’m going to walk up there and see if I can get a signal on my phone.” And before her brother could argue with her, Rose was off, scrambling up the hill, using one hand to steady herself on trees and shrubs while she used the other to wave her phone, hoping for a signal.

“Did we almost drive onto some sort of runway?” Rose murmured a few minutes later. That was sure what the place on the top of the hill looked like in the dim light coming off of her phone. A runway with unfortunately no cell phone signal either. Rose moaned in frustration, turning to start back to the car. Hopefully Tommy had found something they could use to recharge the GPS.

Somehow she must have started down a slightly different path than the one she had taken up, because Rose suddenly stumbled over something and fell, the phone bouncing out of her hands, and landing a foot away. She shook her head, slightly winded from the impact with the frozen ground, and then her breath was really taken away as she saw in the phone’s dim light what she had stumbled over, a man’s body with what looked like a bullet hole in his head, another body just a few feet away and what she was really afraid was a third body, covered with leaves a few feet beyond that. She couldn’t help it. She let out a shriek.

“Rose!” Thomas dropped the bag he had been digging through and was out of the car in a flash. “Rose!”

“Oh, my…” His jaw dropped when he reached the top of the hill and caught sight of the bodies, and his sister, kneeling by a pile of leaves, shoving them away. “Rosie?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Rose pressed her fingertips to the throat of the woman who had been buried under the leaves, and after a tense moment felt a weak throbbing. “Yes!” She hadn’t just imagined it when she thought she heard a moan and saw movement. “Tommy, figure a way to get the car up here fast! Ma'am? Can you hear me?” She reached out and hit her phone with shaking hands, turning on the flashlight app to give her more light than the regular screen was providing. There was blood on the woman’s head, thick and clotted, but at least not the round bullet hole in the forehead that she had seen on the men. “Ma'am?”

“How bad is it?” Thomas asked his sister as he hurried over.

“Really, really bad. The other two were shot in the head, and it looked like whoever did it tried to shoot her too, but the bullet ricocheted, or their aim was off or something.” Rose said as she continued to check the injured woman as best she could. “She’s really cold. She must have been out here for hours. I think maybe she tried to use the leaves for some sort of protection, but it wasn’t enough.” Slow pulse, barely sixty, labored breathing, icy cold skin. Not good. “Get the car and there are blankets or something, right? We’ve got to get her to a hospital.” Trying to move someone who was injured wasn’t the greatest idea, she knew, but with no cell phone signal and them being stuck who knows where, it was really the only option they had. There was no way this woman had the time it would take for Tommy to drive until he found either a signal or a landline, and for an ambulance to get back there.

“Car. Blankets. Be right back.” Leaving his sister with two dead bodies and a possibly dying woman, probably not good, but better that than risk those dead bodies turning from two into three.

“Ma'am?” Rose called again, hoping for some sort of reaction from the woman. “My brother’s gone to get our car. We’re going to get you out of the cold and to a hospital, alright? Can you open your eyes for me? Ma'am?” A bit of hope crept into her voice as there was another weak moan, and a slight twitching of the woman’s eyelashes. “It’s okay. My name’s Rose, and my brother’s Tommy. We’re going to get you to the hospital and get you taken care of. It’s going to be okay. Just try to stay awake, alright?”

Tired, she was so tired and all she wanted to do was sleep, but Victoria Hand somehow forced herself to listen to the voice talking above her. Someone, she wasn’t sure who, but she had to take a chance, had to warn Coulson. She couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t even flutter her eyelids enough to let her see a tiny bit, but somehow she forced out the phone number. “Coulson. Call. Warn. Ward. Hydra. He’s Hydra.”

“Ward?” Why would this woman mention her last name? How would she even know her last name? But then a feeling of horror hit Rose. “Do you mean Grant Ward?” She asked in a shaky voice. “Is he the one who did this to you?”

The nod was weak but Rose saw it, and she shuddered. A nightmare. This was her worst nightmare come to life and for a moment she was a terrified little girl, trapped and almost smothered in a closet. No, no. She shook her head, trying to force that fear away as best she could. She wasn’t a little girl. Not any more. If she let herself think of that closet or the coats or that fear, this poor woman her brother had tried to kill very well could die.

“Rose?” Thomas could tell something was wrong with his sister as soon as he stopped the car and got out, but his first thought that the woman she had been tending had slipped away while he was gone was thankfully not true, he realized as he heard a weak moan.

“Do you have the heater all the way up and blankets? She’s really, really cold.” Rose made herself focus on the injured woman, to keep the panic that hearing her brother’s name had triggered halfway at bay.

“I’ve got a bed made up on the back seat for her. Ma'am, I’m really sorry I didn’t get a bigger car. Or an SUV.” Tommy said as he knelt down by his sister and got his first good look at the injured woman. She was tall, and the back seat wasn’t going to be the best fit, but it was all they had. He reached out and gathered her up, the movement triggering another, louder moan as he lifted her, and carried her to the car with Rose following anxiously behind.

“Rose, is she okay?” They had settled the injured woman onto the makeshift bed and swaddled her in the few blankets they had, with their coats on top, but still, he knew it wasn’t much. Rose settled onto the floorboard next to her as Tommy got behind the wheel of the car and looked anxiously into the rearview mirror.

Rose gently felt for a pulse again, then sighed when she found one and also as the woman’s eyelashes fluttered in response to the touch. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital and…. Tommy, she said who did this to her. She said it was Grant.”

“What?” Thomas somehow kept from hitting the brakes in shock at hearing a name he hoped never to hear again. “Are you sure?”

“Don’t you think I wish it wasn’t him?” Rose whispered. “We’ve got to get her help, and then we’ve got to make sure he can’t ever hurt anyone else again.”


End file.
